Written to celebrate the visit of Archduke Karl of Styria to Florence during the carnival season of 1625, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola di Alcina, to a libretto by Ferdinando Saracinelli, is based on an episode from Ludovico Ariosto’s immensely popular epic poem Orlando furioso. Its narrative structure, which centres on the battle between two sorceresses, Alcina and Melissa, for possession of the warrior Ruggiero, here given a pleasantly authoritative portrayal by Mauro Borgioni, would certainly have been familiar to the aristocratic audience which gathered on a February morning to witness the first performance. More unfamiliar perhaps was the idea that the music had been composed by a woman. Francesca Caccini, daughter of the legendary singer and court musician Giulio Caccini, now occupies the history books as the first professional female composer, and La liberazione is undoubtedly her masterpiece.

At the dramatic heart of the work lie two strophic arias. The first, performed by the Siren who represents the power of song, is powerfully rendered with dazzling vocal agility by Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, who convincingly negotiates the virtuoso passagework and surprising harmonic shifts of the accompaniment. Shortly afterwards comes Alcina’s complaint at being abandoned by Ruggiero, an extended exercise in the fashion for laments inaugurated by Monteverdi’s Arianna. Elena Biscuola’s superbly controlled and dramatically paced performance successfully exploits every textual nuance, in a finely shaded depiction of Alcina’s shifting emotional states. But perhaps the most remarkable music of all is reserved for the chorus of Alcina’s discarded lovers, transformed into enchanted plants, who plead with Ruggiero not to leave. In this magical self-contained episode the choral delivery is underpinned by changing instrumental groups whose timbres lighten as the mood brightens.

There is much else to enjoy on this engaging recording, from Gabriella Martellacci’s effective reading of Melissa to the stylish playing of the instrumentalists, in what is surely the most successful account of La liberazione to date. Strictly speaking the work is not an opera but a sung entertainment which should finish with staged dances, though Caccini’s score, also published in 1625, does not include them. Elena Sartori, who directs her own transcription from the keyboard with sensitivity and imagination, inserts two contemporary balletti into the final scene to make good the omission.